Ben Folds talks Nick Hornby collaboration album

Not terribly long ago, Ben Folds released his sixth (or seventh, if you count the odd Fear of Pop solo endeavor, Volume One) studio album, Way to Normal. At about the same time, he said he was planning on making a record with High Fidelity author Nick Hornby, telling an Australian news outlet that he would "whip out" the music for the lyrics Hornby writes much in the vein of how he busted out a handful of songs in July 2008 for the infamous "fake" album.

But Folds' next release wasn't the Hornby collaboration, it was a collection of a cappella groups doing their takes on the songwriter's work called Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella. Folds worked with and recorded each of the vocal ensembles, going to them and knocking out the tracks. He even contributed two of his own a cappella renditions.

Now it appears the snarky singer/songwriter is ready to record the aforementioned Hornby collaboration in June. Speaking recently with Paste, he detailed where they're at and how he'd like the sessions to go down. “[Hornby's] written like 18 pieces, I think, so far," Folds said. "I’m trying to keep up at
the moment, 'cause I’m doing all this other stuff and touring. I think
that’s gonna be a fairly quick and live recording. The fake tracks that
are on the Stems and Seeds release were six songs written, recorded,
mixed in one day. So, yeah, I am on that [kick] at the moment.

“I’m gonna write the music really quickly... The band will be coming in, you know, say one or two o’clock. I’ll get there in the morning, look at the lyrics, come up with something and then when they show up, I’ll show ‘em how the song goes and we’ll press record and do it. I think it’s gonna be fun."

When asked about editing down the seemingly large batch of songs Hornby's prepared, Folds indicated that, quite naturally, some songs will get tossed. “I think what’ll happen is, some of them will be better than others, and there’ll be an infant-mortality rate to contend with."